Better Call Saul: meet America's most outrageous lawyers

One 'thinks like a criminal', another hired a beauty queen as his assistant.
As Breaking Bad's Saul Goodman returns, we speak to the lawyers who will do
almost anything for their clients

A law unto himself: Breaking Bad's shady lawyer Saul Goodman

By Jacqui Goddard

8:00AM GMT 08 Feb 2015

Sleazy, cheesy and all too happy to go the extra mile for a client, Breaking Bad's Saul Goodman came highly recommended in the hunt for a lawyer willing to cross to the dark side.

"This is the guy you want," meth dealer Jesse Pinkman told his partner in crime Walter White, in the second season of the hit television drama. "When the going gets tough, you don't want a criminal lawyer. You want a criminal lawyer, know what I'm sayin'?"

Now, six years after the shady, silver-tongued Goodman - played by actor Bob Odenkirk - first oozed onto television screens, he is set for his own spin-off series, Better Call Saul, which takes its title from the character's advertising slogan.

Better Call Saul: teaser trailer

Set in 2002, making it a prequel to Breaking Bad, the comedy dramachronicles Goodman's backstory, starting with his days as a struggling fledgling attorney named Jimmy McGill and covering his progression to a bombastic shyster working under a pseudonym derived from his mantra, "S'all good man."

The stakes are high; Breaking Bad - which aired from 2008 to 2013 - won awards including 16 Emmys, two Golden Globes and - in its final year - an entry in the Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed television drama of all time.

"Breaking Bad was one of the greatest shows in American TV history. That's a tough act to follow," says Prof Bob Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, in New York.

"Saul was one of the delightful bits of comic relief that Breaking Bad did so well… a bottom feeder in the legal profession, a lawyer without scruples who will do bad things for the clients he takes on. Yet there's a sense that he's also probably one of the least hypocritical of any of the characters in that show. He is who he is, a 'what-you see is what you get' kind of guy, and that gives him a certain likeability. And how Odenkirk inhabited that character, you feel Goodman really exists."

Indeed, America's legal profession has had its share of "real Saul Goodmans", similar either in terms of swagger, criminality, or both. Notable among them is the aptly named Eric C Conn, whose tendency for flamboyance and disregard for professional ethics made him a household name in Kentucky.

Just as the fictitious Goodman promoted his services in tacky television spots ("Oh hello, I was just working on a multimilliondollar lawsuit for one of my clients," Goodman smarms to viewers in one, as dollar signs flash on the screen and a cash register jangles), Conn posed for dazzling yellow advertising hoardings with his suit jacket slung jauntily over his shoulder and a caption billing himself as "Mr Social Security". He promised to win clients fat payouts in federal disability benefits.

A billboard ad for the services of Kentucky lawyer Eric C Conn

Just as Goodman furbished his office in a dingy strip-mall with over-the-top Greek columns, an 8ft-high copy of the US Constitution painted on the wall and an inflatable Statue of Liberty on the roof, Conn paid $500,000 to have a one-ton replica of the Abraham Lincoln memorial carved in stone and placed outside his "law complex" - a roadside cluster of wooden cabins in Stanville, Kentucky.

He employed a beauty queen as his public relations officer, hired busty promotions girls in skimpy tops emblazoned with his name, dated a porn star and, in the vain hope of persuading President Barack Obama to appoint him to the federal government's Social Security Board, made a music video starring a tap-dancing, hipwiggling model in tight shorts.

He resigned from the bar in disgrace in 2011 amid a US congressional investigation into disability fraud, in which he was accused of colluding with a judge and two doctors to scam millions from the federal welfare system. Investigations remain ongoing.

"A lot of lawyers do their job well, a lot don't," says Todd Levitt, a criminal defence attorney in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, who describes himself as "the closest thing there is to Saul Goodman without crossing the line".

"I will advocate hard for my clients, I fight and fight, I'm an alpha male. There's a point where you approach the line but you remind yourself not to go over it," he says.

Wearing sunglasses and a loud waistcoat, his finger pointing at the camera in a corny "I can help YOU" pose, he launched a marketing campaign under the slogan "In legal trouble? Better call Todd." He has also filmed a pitch for a reality show called "In Todd We Trust".

Michigan lawyer Todd Levitt is happy to cash-in on the 'likeable' persona of Saul Goodman

"Saul Goodman is likeable, he practises with a sense of humour, and I love the way he dresses. I'm like that too. I wear black patent leather wedding shoes because they're the shiniest shoes I can find and people always look at your shoes. When people look at mine, they have to wear sunglasses," he says with pride.

Well known on the University of Central Michigan campus, where he parties and sings karaoke in college bars, he earns regular business from students caught on drink-driving and drugs charges. When a campus worker set up a parody Twitter account mocking him, he fired off a lawsuit and a stream of Twitter abuse in return.

"Who did you think you were f---ing with?" he raged, advising his detractors that they would "need to grab some Vaseline where I'm sending them".

"The bottom line is, it's all about the client, it's not about me. But I think as a lawyer the fact I carry myself with confidence - I look good when I go to court, feel good, smell good - it means I'm going to be doing my best."

Daniel Muessig, a criminal defence attorney in Pittsburgh, caused an outcry when he produced a TV ad using actors to depict criminals in the act of breaking the law - climbing through a house window with a laptop computer, heading down a street with guns cocked, dealing drugs on a street corner - each proclaiming "Thanks Dan!" in gratitude for his legal services.

"Consequences. They sure suck don't they? America was built on freedom, not on a bunch of people with more money than you telling you what you can or cannot do with all their stupid 'laws'," he complains in the narrative.

"Trust me, I may have a law degree but I think like a criminal… pay me now, thank me later."

His business increased "probably between 50-fold and 100-fold" after the commercial aired, he explains. "I was just trying to make it clear that I won't just ignore you and take your money and blow you off or throw you under the bus. I'm not a functionary in the court system that's there to put you away, I'm there as your advocate. The commercial isn't saying I'll break the law," he says.

Saul Goodman, says Muessig, "is a largely maligned character".

"You're talking about a guy that obviously committed grievous ethical violations and broke the law in a million ways, but there's still part of him that stays true to the concept of doing absolutely anything for your client."

In a blog inviting readers to share stories of "other Saul Goodmans", one lawyer tells the tale of a colleague who mounted an orange light on the front bumper of his truck, which he would switch on when he was intoxicated, illuminating a sticker that read "Drunk driving".

Another time, "the court called him and demanded that he come in because they had just arrested one of his clients. He told the court that he didn't have a coat and tie, but they told him to come in anyway. When he gets there, the judge was all over him for not having a coat and tie. So he leaves and comes back wearing a coat and tie… and a pair of shorts. The judge exploded." The colleague was found in contempt and fined.

To accompany the show, the AMC network has set up bettercallsaul.com, a website made to look like a real sales pitch for Saul Goodman.

"Get cash now!!! I can prove that baby's not yours," shouts a headline above a picture of a bemused infant.

"From parking tickets to mass murder… Saul Goodman and Associates is your one-stop shop for all your legal needs," the character boasts in a web video, going on to suggest that he can also help clients to reap fat payouts from lawsuits.

In real life, Jim "The Hammer" Shapiro - a one-time lawyer in Florida and New York specialising in personal injury cases - lured clients with aggressive advertising taglines that included "I may be an SOB, but I'm your SOB".

New York's Supreme Court awarded a $1.5million judgment against him for legal malpractice after he botched a medical lawsuit that he was handling for a car crash victim who he had failed to even meet.

He was also suspended from practice after sending a letter of solicitation to a comatose patient in hospital, within days of her car being hit by a train, and was censured for television commercials that showed dead bodies, Satan and people being blown up.

He went on to pen books titled Sue the B------s, Victims' Rights to Maximum Cash and Million Dollar Lungs.

Better Call Saul, dreamt up by Breaking Bad's creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, debuts on America's AMC network on February 8 and will be available to UK viewers on Netflix.

Viewers unfamiliar with Breaking Bad will not be at a disadvantage. "We're trying to make something that stands on its own, that has an entertainment value that's not just seeing a series of old favourites or 'remember when…?'" says Gould.

But nor will Better Call Saul abandon its roots. Actor Jonathan Banks will also star, reprising his role as private investigator and hitman Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad. There will be nods to the original series, though no appearances from Walter White or Jesse Pinkman; at least, not in series one, say the creators. A second series is in the making.

The series will give viewers a more dimensional Saul Goodman as he navigates "a complex and ever-changing prism of ethical choices." "That's part of the paradox of Saul Goodman," says Gould. "He dresses in a ridiculous way, he's got billboards, he's got ridiculous ads, but he is a shrewd customer."